Power2SME, an Indian ecommerce platform for small and medium companies to buy raw materials and get working capital without collateral, received a $10m equity investment from IFC, a member of the World Bank Group.
In addition to the investment, IFC will also advise Power2SME to help it expand beyond its current 14 states, improve its ability to provide working capital to SMEs by adding more banks as partners, and increase the number of users on its platforms by up to 10 times in five years.
Led by R Narayan, Founder and CEO, Power2SME provides a B2B ecommerce platform for SMEs. The company, backed by venture capital firms such as Kalaari Capital, Accel Partners, Inventus Capital, and Nandan Nilekani, who joined as a strategic advisor through his investment in late 2015, began operations in 2012 and operates out of 7 offices and 14 states in India with a current employee base of 250.
With a registered SME base of 50,000 SMEs, the company has a product portfolio of three platforms addressing challenges in raw material procurement, Finance and MRO needs. Its B2B raw materials buying club (Power2SME.com) aggregates demand from SMEs for most commonly acquired raw materials (such as steel, chemicals, polymers, yarn etc.) and procures and sells these at competitive prices. Second, its platform (FinanSME.com) connects empaneled lenders with SMEs in order to provide working capital finance at better terms from banks and non-banking financial institutions for purchases on Power2SME.
Third, a one stop shop addressing SME MRO needs (SMEShops.com) to meet the frequent requirements of SME buyers for consumable industrial goods and for sellers to reach out to customers and widen their market access.
FinSMEs
18/09/2017